Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans-all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world? A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French-speaking mother's gumbo often began with a chicken chased down in the yard. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries. In Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou, Wells does just that. He spends time with octogenarian chefs who turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; observes the gumbo-making rituals of an iconic New Orleans restaurant where high-end Creole cooking and Cajun cuisine first merged. Gumbo Life, rendered in Wells' affable prose, makes clear that gumbo is more than simply a delicious dish: it's an attitude, a way of seeing the world. For all who read its pages, this is a tasty culinary memoir-to be enjoyed and shared like a simmering pot of gumbo.

With a long and colorful family history of defying storms, the seafaring Robin cousins of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, make a fateful decision to ride out Hurricane Katrina on their hand-built fishing boats in a sheltered Civil War-era harbor called Violet Canal. But when Violet is overrun by killer surges, the Robins must summon all their courage, seamanship, and cunning to save themselves and the scores of others suddenly cast into their care. In this gripping saga, Louisiana native Ken Wells provides a close-up look at the harrowing experiences in the backwaters of New Orleans during and after Katrina. Focusing on the plight of the intrepid Robin family, whose members trace their local roots to before the American Revolution, Wells recounts the landfall of the storm and the tumultuous seventy-two hours afterward, when the Robins' beloved bayou country lay catastrophically flooded and all but forgotten by outside authorities as the world focused its attention on New Orleans. Wells follows his characters for more than two years as they strive, amid mind-boggling wreckage and governmental fecklessness, to rebuild their shattered lives. This is a story about the deep longing for home and a proud bayou people's love of the fertile but imperiled low country that has nourished them.

The capstone of Ken Wells’s acclaimed Catahoula Bayou trilogy, Logan’s Storm tracks the epic journey of Logan LaBauve as he flees corrupt cops while trying to lead Chilly Cox—the teenager whose “crime” was rescuing Logan’s son, Meely, from a racist bully—to safety. But dodging two-footed predators deep in the Cajun backwaters turns out to be the easy part. As Logan, accompanied by a newfound love interest, heads to Florida to lie low, a killer hurricane springs from the Gulf—and lives are suddenly on the line. Wells writes with Twain’s flair for adventure and Welty’s sense of place, making Logan’s Storm a trip through the heart and soul of a singular American character.

Fifteen years after he tormented fellow students at Catahoula Bayou School, Junior Guidry is broke, drunk, one-legged, and living in a wreck of a trailer on the edge of a snake-infested swamp. He's survived an oil-rig accident that would've killed most men but, with the help of a good lawyer, made him rich instead. But he's squandered his fortune on drink, blackjack, womanizing, and brawling, leaving a wake of wrecked cars and friendships, not to mention lost or stolen wooden legs. Then the mysterious Iris Mary Parfait enters his life. She's on the run from a tragic childhood and a bad, bad man. When news reaches Junior that a bar owner with Mob connections has posted a $100,000 bounty on Iris's head because she knows too much about him, Junior realizes he could regain his fortune—but at what cost?

Narrated in Junior's unvarnished voice, Junior's Leg takes the reader on a singular journey through the mind of a troubled man. It is at turns unsettling, ribald, sexy, and poignant—a bold stroke of storytelling that ultimately plumbs the possibilities of love and redemption, even for as unlikely a candidate as Junior.


From the Hardcover edition.

For more than sixty years, "The Wall Street Journal" has prided itself not just on its serious journalism, but also on the whimsical and arcane stories that amuse and delight its readers. In that regard, animal stories have proven to be the most beloved of all. Now, veteran "Journal" reporter and Page One editor Ken Wells gathers the finest, funniest, and most fascinating of these animal tales in one exceptional book.
Here are lighthearted, witty stories of breakthroughs in goldfish surgery, the untiring efforts of British animal lovers who guide lovesick toads across dangerous motorways, and the quest to tame doggy anxieties by prescribing the human pacifier Prozac. Other pieces reflect on mankind's impact on the animal kingdom: a close-up look at the nascent fish-rights movement, the retirement of U.S. Air Force chimpanzees that once soared through space, and ongoing scientific efforts to defeat that most hardy enemy -- the cockroach.
Each of these fifty-odd stories -- from the outlandish to the poignant -- exemplifies the superb feature writing that makes "The Wall Street Journal" one of America's best-written newspapers. This charming and utterly captivating collection will be a joy not only to animal lovers, but to all those who appreciate artful storytelling by writers who are obviously having a wonderful time spinning the tales.

On any given day, millions of Wall Street Journal readers put aside the serious business and economic news of the day to focus first on the paper's middle column (a.k.a. the A-hed), a virtual sound-bubble for light literary fare -- a short story, a tall tale, an old yarn, a series of vignettes, and other unexpected delights that seem to "float off the page." In this first-ever compendium of middle-column pieces, you'll find an eclectic selection of writings, from the outlandish to the oddly enlightening. Read about:

• one man's attempt to translate the Bible into Klingon
• sheep orthodontics, pet-freezing, and toad-smoking
• being hip in Cairo, modeling at auto shows, piano-throwing
• the fate of mail destined for the World Trade Center after 9/11
• the plight of oiled otters in Prince William Sound

...and much, much more. Edited by 20-year Journal veteran Ken Wells, and with a foreword by Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis, Floating Off the Page is the perfect elixir for fans of innovative prose in all its forms and function.

Fifteen-year-old Meely LaBauve is growing up on Catahoula Bayou and living by his wits. Not since Huck Finn rafted down the Mississippi has there been a coming-of-age story like this, told in such an utterly authentic unlettered American voice. From a charming encounter with first love in the Canciennes' corn patch to an adventurous paddle through wild and timeless places little explored, Ken Wells has cooked up a zesty gumbo of a book--rich, poignant, and often hilarious.

* An American Library Association/YALSA best book of the year